Are there any back-end services running in Pick environments? I mean,
you are the host, you have the tools to connect to the Internet. I
write the internet customer-facing pages, and when a function is
called it hits *your* service and responds to the call.

I'm not even talking necessarily about hosting the pages, just
responding to the function calls.

Will Johnson

On Jan 20, 8:46*am, wjhonson <wjhon... (AT) aol (DOT) com> wrote:
You can do this with Visage and other tools (I believe U2 have this
facility more or less out of the box)

Visage allows us to "cheat", so we can smudge the borders somewhat.
For example you can effectively CALL a pick basic routine from a web
page (including passing parameters) and do "stuff" with the results
(allowing you to leverage your existing backend code assets), and/or a
pick basic routine can execute a javascript function that already
exists on a web page, or generate dynamic code that is executed if you
would prefer/need (allowing you to leverage pretty much "anything"
that is available on the network/internet)

On 2011-01-19 16:46:54 -0500, wjhonson <wjhonson (AT) aol (DOT) com> said:

I'm not sure I understand the reason for the question. Are you looking
for a hosted web service that is "powered" by a MV back end, to which
you can connect?

We've been doing this for years for our clients, but the applications
are mostly B2B and/or in-house, so there is no opportunity to allow you
to connect to them.

These days, it really is dirt simple to have web services powered by a
MV back end. We generally use HTTP as the transport, but work with
varied payload formats such as SOAP, XML-RPC, custom XML, and more
recently, JSON.

--
Kevin Powick

On Jan 19, 4:46*pm, wjhonson <wjhon... (AT) aol (DOT) com> wrote:
I think you're missing a huge gap in the layering here. Getting from
database to browser can not be simplified that easily. When you write
"customer-facing" pages what are you writing it in and what kind of
remote architecture are you wanting to hit? If you are asking if
anyone has public XML/HTTP services available with MV as the main
logic engine then the answer is "yes". A while back I threw together
some prelimary integration tools for customers to pull our pricing and
inventory from their own backend or inside PHP/Perl/other script langs
using normal HTTP get/post requests. The service returns non-SOAP XML
responses which includes additional functionality such as order
history inquiry and shipment tracking information(for properly
configured customers). I got one inquiry about this type of service
since the XML overview was published in Dec 2009 and the business
request behind that request was not a fit for our business model.
http://www.all-spec.com/developers.html

The wrong people are seeing our web site with regards to tech
integration. A company blog article about it got very little
attention. I don't have a proven plan to reach the correct people
since most buyers don't care to provide, or don't have access to,
upper IT management contact info. So, even if I built a shiny SOAP
service I doubt we'll have any takers. It's a little frustrating, to
say the least, since I'm always looking for ways to eliminate the re-
keying aspect of daily business-to-business transactions. Faxes are,
by far, the most inefficient way to communication business information
these days but we still get tons of them and most of them are sent
from automated purchasing systems that would easily tie into our
system via raw XML or SOAP.

GlenB

"wjhonson" <wjhonson (AT) aol (DOT) com> wrote

Yes, there are.

--
frosty

On 01/19/2011 04:46 PM, wjhonson wrote:
My company is using U2 and Designer (used to be RedBack) to provide
calls to a Cold Fusion front-end for the actual customer facing web page.
Art

On Jan 19, 10:39*pm, Art <artma... (AT) triad (DOT) rr.com> wrote:
My company is using php on the front-end to QM as a back end database.

Eugene

I speaking of public services, not private ones, and also ones which
exist, not ones which *can* be built. GlenB I think answered the
question most directly.

Let's take a very trivial example. Let's say you have a service which
just adds two numbers together. A person can go to your
"AddTwoNumbers" page, fill out your form and click Submit OR they can
make up their own form and send it to your back-end with a GET.

Or they can execute some form of call to your backend and have the
result returned into their program.

The whole point of my question is that the service should be public,
and existing

Glen I tried to go to your developers page you linked above and it's
just a redirect back to itself or something weird like that.... No
information on it.

Everyone has said "yes" to your inquiry. You could take that to mean
"existing".

As far as public, "yes", I have clients running interfaces which are
accessed from the open internet. I have a Facebook app which is
backed by MV. And I have created a number of other services for open
consumer facing apps which all integrate tightly with MV.

I think a problem here was that you led with the title "Web Services"
which is a specific kind of connectivity.

I think another problem is that you just ask if something exists, not
if you can use it, buy it, see it in action, or see the source. If
you can narrow your needs down to a "I need to do 'this' " I think
you'll get a more focused and less frustrating response.

If your ultimate question is "where can I get something for free, with
source, that just does what I want" I'm afraid your responses will be
limited. Somewhere between that and where we started should lead to
something more helpful.

T

wjhonson <wjhonson (AT) aol (DOT) com> wrote:

On 2011-01-20 12:22:34 -0500, wjhonson <wjhonson (AT) aol (DOT) com> said:

The flip side to building a system with aspects that rely on third
party web services is that you add more links to the chain which you do
not control. If that web service goes dark, changes without notice, or
imposes fees (new or higher), you can end up with a problem.

Generally, I would stick to using the web services provided by a
company with which I'm already doing business. For example, presuming
I ship with FedEx, using FedEx's web service to integrate package
tracking into my application.

One thing though. If it's a web service, what do you care about the
"back end"? One of the major aspects of web service is that it's just
an API into a "black box". Your applications should never be concerned
with, nor should it matter, how the back end is implemented.

--
Kevin Powick